


tonight you belong to me

by SkylandMountain1013



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Space Angst, These poor babies, i like to break phil coulson, let them be happy, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 06:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12978078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkylandMountain1013/pseuds/SkylandMountain1013
Summary: “You know,” he muses.  “I always wanted to be an astronaut as a kid.”Melinda bites back a laugh. “How’s that going for you?”“I should have just gone to Space Camp instead.”Phil. Melinda. A conversation.





	tonight you belong to me

**Author's Note:**

> Totally throwing my hat into the ring of INCREDIBLE stories this season has given us. Here goes.

Predictably, life at the Lighthouse doesn’t get any easier for them. Days turn into weeks, and with no contact from Daisy or Jemma and no further answers about their journey— the slog has caught up with them. 

Days are spent avoiding punishment from Grill and his men, and nights are spent huddled in their makeshift workroom, sleeping in shifts and trying to piece together what little information they have. 

Mack’s metric vibrates, signaling that it’s time to swap. “Alright,” he says, motioning to the group. “Who’s up next?”

YoYo nods at Coulson. “Your turn, jefe. See you in three hours.”

“I’ll be back in one.”

Melinda catches his gaze- his eyes are bloodshot and days worth of dirt are caked into his clothing. “You need more than that, Coulson.” She tries to keep her tone soft. 

Tess chimes in from the back corner. “You’ll be useless to us if you end up as Roach bait.”

Phil forces a smile and wipes at his eyes. “I’m fine. Every hour asleep is an hour I’m not finding a solution to all this.” He ascends the ladder into their sleeping compartment. 

“Seriously,” Tess groans. “I’m not dying because he’s too stupid to sleep.”

Melinda shoots a look at the younger woman. “He just needs some time to get his thoughts straight.”

“He needs some damn sense talked into him!” The tension in the room heightens as voices raise.

Mack steps in. “Enough. Both of you. Tess, take the lookout shift. May- go deal with Coulson.”

“He doesn’t need-“

“He needs you,” YoYo interjects. 

Melinda doesn’t answer, only heads up the ladder with a sigh. 

——————-

 

She can tell the exact moment he realizes someone is behind him. Shoulders straighten, knees bend slightly, hand reaches reflexively to where a holster should rest. 

“It’s just me.” 

Phil’s posture relaxes. 

She drops her jacket on the thin mattress in the corner and moves to stand next to him. 

“I just... I thought you could use some company.” She can feel the color creeping up her neck. Space expands and contracts around them. 

He hasn’t taken his gaze off of the star field in front of him. 

“You know,” he muses. “I always wanted to be an astronaut as a kid.”

Melinda bites back a laugh. “How’s that going for you?”

“I should have just gone to Space Camp instead.”

Silence settles in between them and Phil’s eyes slip shut. She watches two asteroid fragments crash into each other in the distance. 

She tries not to think what part of the Earth those came from. 

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he whispers. 

There’s been an unspoken promise not to lie to each other- so she doesn’t tell him that everything will work out. Instead she slides her fingers across his. 

“I don’t know either. But I believe we will make it home.” 

Phil’s eyes open again. The exhaustion is replaced by anger. “And what then? How long until the next disaster? We had less than a day to process the hell that was the Framework before we got shipped here. And before that? How much time did you have to recover from dying before getting replaced with an LMD? It just doesn’t end.”

“We took an oath. We both knew what we were getting into.”

“I must have missed the class in the Academy about surviving continuous emotional devastation,” he spits. 

She lets him pull away and rest his head against the glass of the bay window. When he speaks again, his voice takes her back to a cockpit in the stars, a tunnel beneath a fractured base. 

“You ended up with a pipe through your leg. I can’t..” He trails off. 

“Hey.” Sliding her arms around him, she rests against his back. Through his thin shirt she can feel the edges of his scar against her cheek. They vibrate as he breathes in and out. “I’m going to be fine.”

“For how long? There has to be a limit on how many times someone can survive catastrophe. Every trawler run, every recon mission, I think we’ve run out of luck. We’ve lost the world- I can’t lose you too.”

She tugs at his shirt until he’s facing her. “I’m here, Phil. I’m here.”

Years later, she won’t be able to answer what caused her to finally take the last step- whether it was the reality of their situation, the natural conclusion of their decades long story, or something as trivial as the way the starlight was dancing off his neck. 

In the moment though, she only knows that the pull to him is stronger than gravity. 

So she closes the gap between them and presses her lips against his. He tastes of dirt and sweat and just a hint of sadness. It’s somehow intoxicating. 

When she pulls away it takes him a beat to recover. A breath, a heartbeat, then a blink of comprehension. 

Their second kiss is deeper, more insistent, sadness replaced with understanding and fulfillment and flashes of heat. His hands tangle in her hair and her fingers ghost up  
and down his chest. 

They part yet keep their foreheads touching, short breaths intermingling. 

“Melinda.” Her name shakes off his lips. He swallows hard. “I need to know that this wasn’t just because were probably going to die tomorrow.”

She shakes her head. It’s all she can manage. 

Phil continues. “Because I won’t be able to turn it off again. I can’t. If this is it- this is it.”

She runs her thumb over his jaw, pad raking against his stubble. “I don’t want to take any steps back. We both need something to look forward to. Both on this godforsaken rust bucket and once we get home.”

“God, that conversation feels like it was years ago.”

She groans at his choice of words. 

“Time travel humor. Trying to work it into my repertoire.”

Melinda silences him with another quick kiss. 

“Ignoring your stupid act of martyrdom, you have about two hours left in this shift. You need to sleep.”

Phil looks at her in wonder. It’s his turn to flush. “Will you stay?”

It doesn’t take her long to answer. 

“Always.”


End file.
